“A vocaphone,” replied Kennedy. “This sanitarium is quite up to date, Klemm.”
The doctor nodded and smiled. “Yes, Kennedy,” he replied. “Communicating with every suite of rooms we have the vocaphone. I find it very convenient to have these microphones, as I suppose you would call them, catching your words without talking into them directly as you have to do in the telephone and then at the other end emitting the words without the use of an earpiece, from the box itself, as if from a megaphone horn. Miss Haversham, this is Dr. Klemm. There is a Dr. Kennedy here visiting another patient, a specialist from New York. He’d like very much to see you if you can spare a few minutes.”
“Tell him to come up.” The voice seemed to come from the vocaphone as though she were in the room with us.
Veronica Haversham was indeed wonderful, one of the leading figures in the night life of New York, a statuesque brunette of striking beauty, though I had heard of often ungovernable temper. Yet there was something strange about her face here. It seemed perhaps a little yellow, and I am sure that her nose had a peculiar look as if she were suffering from an incipient rhinitis. The pupils of her eyes were as fine as pin heads, her eyebrows were slightly elevated. Indeed, I felt that she had made no mistake in taking a rest if she would preserve the beauty which had made her popularity so meteoric.
“Miss Haversham,” began Kennedy, “they tell me that you are suffering from nervousness. Perhaps I can help you. At any rate it will do no harm to try. I know Dr. Maudsley well, and if he doesn’t approve—well, you may throw the treatment into the waste basket.”
“I’m sure I have no reason to refuse,” she said. “What would you suggest?”
“Well, first of all, there is a very simple test I’d like to try. You won’t find that it bothers you in the least—and if I can’t help you, then no harm is done.”
Again I watched Kennedy as he tactfully went through the preparations for another kind of psychanalysis, placing Miss Haversham at her ease on a davenport in such a way that nothing would distract her attention. As she reclined against the leather pillows in the shadow it was not difficult to understand the lure by which she held together the little coterie of her intimates. One beautiful white arm, bare to the elbow, hung carelessly over the edge of the davenport, displaying a plain gold bracelet.
“Now,” began Kennedy, on whom I knew the charms of Miss Haversham produced a negative effect, although one would never have guessed it from his manner, “as I read off from this list of words, I wish that you would repeat the first thing, anything,” he emphasized, “that comes into your head, no matter how trivial it may seem. Don’t force yourself to think. Let your ideas flow naturally. It depends altogether on your paying attention to the words and answering as quickly as you can—remember, the first word that comes into your mind. It is easy to do. We’ll call it a game,” he reassured.
Kennedy handed a copy of the list to me to record the answers. There must have been some fifty words, apparently senseless, chosen at random, it seemed. They were: